Why You Should Write that Post, Even if You’re Not Ready to Publish it Yet!

Here’s a quick blogging tip you may not know about or might be overlooking- schedule your posts! Scheduling a post is the perfect way to create content while you’re inspired and have the time to work on it! I personally like to have posts scheduled out at least a week in advance. I currently post five days a week so that makes it easier for me to manage. It’s a lot easier for me to get my posts together in stages:

make a note of my post idea

start my draft when I have time to write

look for curated photos or take them myself

polish the post

schedule it to publish

Once you have the idea and a moment to write, it’s the best time to seize the opportunity! Don’t let the fact that you don’t have an hour (or two) to get your post ready to publish stop you from doing the legwork. At this point, you’ve got two options:

Save it as a draft| Let the editor autosave or click the “Save” button and then edit later from your draft posts. If you don’t see the blue “save text” it’s because it was recently saved automatically. Update your draft in stages until you have it ready to publish or move onto your other option below.

Schedule the post| There’s no need to wait to write or dig into your drafts when you’re ready to publish. Whether it’s a post you’re going to publish later this week or later this year, you can do it seamlessly here.

I have to say, this feature has gotten better with time. When I first started blogging at the beginning of 2016, this feature was hit or miss. Most of the times it worked fine but every now and then, it would post unexpectedly. I’ve been using this regularly and haven’t had any issues in 2017 thanks to the updates to the platform. So if you had trouble with this in the past or are scared to try, I can tell you that all of my posts are scheduled ahead and I post five days a week without issue.

Here’s how to schedule a post-

Click on the arrow next to “Status” to reveal the drop-down calendar pictured below. “Publish Immediately” will appear by default.

Select the date and enter the time you want your post to publish as seen here. Be sure to indicate whether the time is AM or PM.

Here’s where the update came in handy. Now there’s a confirmation so you can double check the scheduled date and time! Just make sure it’s scheduled for the exact moment you want this to be posted on your blog and you’re all set!

You can also reschedule a post that’s already been published using this method. Just remember that you if you change the date, the original URL address for the post will change. So if you shared it, linked to that post in any other post, or anyone else shared it those links will no longer function. To reschedule a post, I suggest doing so between 12:01 am and 11:59 pm the day the post was originally scheduled. Gohereto read more about why you might want to reschedule a post under “Publish Day/Time”.

The good thing is, with the recent updates, you’ll now get a notification letting you know links won’t work if you change the date/time in a way that the post link will be impacted-

So there you have it! By scheduling posts out, you have the flexibility to write as you can and ensure you have content regularly published to your site meeting your schedule! This helps you to be consistent with your readers and makes the process behind the scenes more seamless for you! If you have any questions or would like to see tips and tutorials on something I haven’t already covered, just let me know in the comments. I’ll do my best to get you an answer or point you in the right direction. Your feedback is the only way for me to know if I’m providing content that you find valuable, so don’t be shy!

Did you find this helpful? If you’ve never scheduled a post, was this easy to understand? Will you consider scheduling posts in the furture? Feel free to share in the comments!

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